Thunder at 6AM. Now torrential rain (30th Sept 2006)

Thunder at 6AM. Now torrential rain. Winter is finally coming. I am autistic. I am Stephane in Un Coeur en Hiver. I am Will Penny. I am the Consul. I am Noodles. It was so good watching that Stephen Fry programme about depression. Even though he had just been to a party and was laughing and joking and was the life of the party, when he got home he cried his eyes out and thought of ways to kill himself. Richard Dreyfus has only coped by being on medication for the last 30 years. Many people find it hard to cope with their minds. 

I am so ridiculously nervous about meeting —– again tonight. Most people have got lots of different kinds of relationships, as Sarah would say. I do not. I have only my longing for —– and nothing else. —– is everything. I just know how I will feel when I wake up Sunday morning with a hangover, depressed, so so empty, feeling so worthless and pointless because I am alone and without her. I dread it—yet what is the alternative? If I stay in and do not go, I will feel just as empty. At least for a couple of hours I will have the intensity of losing myself in the depravity, of diving deeper into darkness. Into the Libertines, Hogarthian, Crane Wine Menagerie world. What I did was perverse with —–. I eventually got over the black psychological meltdown with Black Bob, I eventually got over the black psychological meltdown with Pooky, I eventually got over the black psychological meltdown with Susi and Irina. I suppose I will eventually get over the black psychological meltdown with —–, but it is hard when temptation is always there, when she is so close. I am so unhappy, because I am alone, because I did not take a chance with —–. Falling in love is awful. I have been bombed to ruins again. What is there for me to look forward to? Just writing with cold blue hands in cold stoveless rooms high in the icy mountains. Complete emptiness and hollowness. 

I was always the one who wanted to stay in the corner and not get involved. Fine. 

I got to the Calcutta at 4 Wednesday and I knew it was ominous when I felt how easy the beer was going down (28th Sept 2006)

I got to the Calcutta at 4 Wednesday and I knew it was ominous when I felt how easy the beer was going down. It was one of those rare special days when the beer goes down so easy. Up to the Scotsman after two pints. Didn’t take me long to realise —– was not there as I did not hear her laughter. A new barmaid! Very sexy brunette. A good line up, Lucky, Vicky, Amanda, Helena, Tequila, Nicky, Crystal and Aussie Victoria. —— gave me a nice welcome back, "where you been?" "Where you been?" I said. "In Italy?" "That was fucking July! Where have you been going?" she said. "My mum’s house." She was pulling shocked faces. "My mind is boggling!" After she danced she came & stood in the dark centre corner with me talking. She has got a private party tonight, Tilly's. Next time I will ask her to put me on the list. I got there about ten to six I think, and —— finished at 7. The last two times she collected she leaned right against me until I put the money in. After she left a little brunette girl came in, and mentioned she was a better dancer than them and had better tits. I pulled her back and stopped her from leaving. And after that she was with me for 30? 40? minutes. Me with my hand on her tits and she with her hand down my pants around the base of my cock. Francesca, she is in love with Jasmine. We made a deal, she will help me with —– and I will help her with Jasmine. Helena was grinning at me as she collected. Because of all this, I completely lost count of my number of pints, but it was a lot. And this was even before I started watching the Levski Sofia v Chelsea game on TV! I think I left before half time, and fell asleep on the No.87 home and had to get one back. 

Straight away I am reminded how attractive this world is, and how much I love it.

I always have to have this twisted painful sado-masochistic relationship with women (27th Sept 2006)

I always have to have this twisted, painful, sado-masochistic relationship with women–like —–, Melani. Where initial fondness and attraction turns to anger and bitterness and incomprehension. Like Stephane with Emmanuelle Beart in Un Coeur en Hiver. Like Will Penny. How close I came to Lotta’s fitta, to Covadonga’s, to —–‘s. To get so close to those lovely soft nubile women’s bodies, to be so close to being let in, and then to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I was absolutely like Stephane with Emmanuelle Beart with —–. Let her know I like her, make her want me, and then just coldly stand there and let her go. 

Just one more night to get through, then—I can go back to the Scotsman.

I suspect when this period of abstinence is over I will return to my sinful ways with more of a vengeance than ever before (26th Sept 2006)

I suspect when this period of abstinence is over, I will return to my sinful ways with more of a vengeance than ever before. Did Alla and Olga really offer me jacuzzi and bed for 250 euros? And I said no? I will go back to Demi and Pamela more than ever. Back to the Scotsman and Sunset Strip and Cinema more than ever. 

My life got overheated. Overlush. 

The Libertines. Hart Crane. Ernest Dowson. “There were no good old days. These are the good old days”. “And you know how I feel out of place, until I’m levered off my face, and I can work out what she’s all about”. Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and the Flying Scotsman absolutely go together. The terrible conflict between wanting to publicly declare my deep love for the Scotsman and my desire to keep it absolutely hidden and private, for myself. It provides some of those “high moments that persuade us to put off suicide”.

Yes I miss those nights at Atlantic City & Sexyland & Golden Gate & Mon Cheri & Monte Carlo & Ciro & Pour Platin and Empire and the Scotsman and Sunset Strip & Cinema but you cannot keep doing it all the time (25th Sept 2006)

Yes I miss those nights at Atlantic City and Sexyland and Golden Gate & Mon Cheri & Monte Carlo & Ciro & Pour Platin and Empire and the Scotsman and Sunset Strip & Cinema, but you cannot keep doing it all the time. You cannot do it every week, 52 weeks a year. Yes I am missing out on all those experiences and all those heady nights and all those new people like Janet or Martina that might be arriving—but it is great to have some months when you do nothing, and then have some months when you go back to it. You have to deny yourself some things for a while, in order to enjoy them again. The longer I leave it the more I will appreciate it when I go back to my Pope life, my Francis Bacon life, my George Grosz life. The Broken World. The Shining Road. Once again I pore over the weather forecasts. For signs, auguries, of when the right time will be to resume my former sinful profligate life. I divine things from the weather. My sexuality is linked to the weather as much as it is linked to finance and to justice and to cathedrals. I will indulge my sexuality when the weather indicators are right, and the financial indicators are right, and the scales of justice feel right, and when in the cathedral it feels right. 

I love the wicked women. I have met some women I could trust in that broken world, Lela, for example, Ana Maria, Pamela. Diana in Berlin or Riccarda. Probably not Iga, as much as I love her! You can genuinely touch someone in that world and be touched by them, I think. I always go into that world looking for love, as I think they are the only women I could ever love. The clink of gold in the glass. The Tallulahs are probably no more cynical than the Esmeraldas. They are only nice to you as long as you are filling their glass with gold. Still, I think you can meet some exceptions, when something genuine passes between you, with Susi, with Janet, with —–. And if I am wrong, then it does not matter. Fleetingly, it felt nice to feel there was something real between us, if only in the blink of an eye. It is those moments that you keep going out looking for. That is what you keep gambling for, throwing so much money down on the roulette table for the very occasional moment when you get back more than you put in. That is what you keep trawling the broken world for, those fleeting moments when eye meets eye and some spark of electricity passes between you, and that current brings you back to life, for a couple of hours, or for one night, at least. That is what the poems of Hart Crane speak to me of: “The flesh assaults outright for bolts that linger” The wine menagerie. How you put on your beer goggles, so everything looks magical, everyone looks beautiful and desirable, and everyone seems to find you beautiful and desirable in return. If it is all commerce, simply, then no matter. There are just those brief moments when it seems so real, comes so close to being real, that it is as good as real. In every city there is Helen of Troy locked up somewhere in a room. She lives on like Orlando, like Emilia Makropolos. You go out every night searching for her, as David Tennant’s Casanova always searches for Laura Fraser. “The sight of a whore is profoundly thrilling to a man”.

How I walked away from Irina without seizing my moment. How I walked away from —– without seizing my moment.How I walked away from Susi without seizing my moment. Maybe Riccarda, too. Pamela? 

 

Some beautiful new pictures of Sunset Strip on the website, what a surprise! Including two absolutely gorgeous pictures of —–. Oh you just look at those pictures and you see how attractive that world is, how easy it is to lose yourself in it, and submerge yourself in it, and let the waters close over your head, and disappear into another world. When you think of —– dancing to Promiscuous Girl. They are the best things in life. Maybe one day I will settle down with —–. Hahaha. I am abstaining from that world completely, just so I can dive back into it so completely when I am ready. Yes I owed £3,600 on October 1st last year, but I then still went ahead & went to Frankfurt for 4 days, Berlin for 5 days, Berlin for one night only, not to mention the last visit to Munich. What real nice warmth did I ever find in that world: —–, Janet, Sylvia, Martina, Amanda. Maybe Luana? I live in the Ernest Dowson world. Don’t stick your head above the parapet unless you want to get shot at.

When I hear Maneater I want to see —– dancing to it. I am obsessed with her. “As Nietzsche put it, while recovering from his intoxication with Wagner: ‘What can be done well today, what can be masterly, is only what is small.'”

I pore over the weather forecasts with such interest (25th Sept 2006)

I pore over the weather forecasts with such interest, as it tells me when the best time is to go back to the shining road. Weather therefore assumes a special significance to me, the same way Justice Palaces do, the same way Bourses do, the same way Cathedrals do. Everything is Eros.

Natalie Maines used to be such a happy go lucky always smiling always laughing kind of girl, then after one throwaway line at a concert, America turned against her and actually tried to destroy her, actually tried to make her want to kill herself. The same way Britain turned against Beckham after one split-second momentary error of judgement, and tried to destroy him, totally crush him, make him want to kill himself. To survive this sudden amazing breathtaking unexpected onslaught, to survive this sudden hate, which you could never have believed if you were not seeing it and hearing it for yourself aimed directly at your person every single day, you must become hard and tough, a fighter, you must kill something in your heart, and you will never be quite the same happy go lucky smiling laughing person again. It will age you very quickly, and make you grow up very quickly. Natalie Maines suddenly looks older, quite drawn, though still of course unbelievably beautiful. But you can see she is an older, wiser, sadder person now, not quite so ever ready with the laugh & the smile. There is a shadow on her, the way there was on Beckham forever after. You find it very hard to trust again. Your faith in the goodness of human beings is almost completely shattered. Almost. Those who keep on loving you, keep on being warm to you, are what keep you going.

I love Dixie Chicks because they went through a really hard time when people tried to destroy them (24th Sept 2006)

I love Dixie Chicks because they went through a really hard time when people tried to destroy them. Which is what happened to me, what happened to Beckham, Cantona, etc. And because Natalie Maines is the closest thing I’ve seen to —–. Short, beautiful, always smiling, always laughing, such a lovely girl, not a bad bone in her body. I feel so sad now, after watching her all night, partly because it makes me miss —–, but also because I wish I could be with Maines! She is so gorgeous. 

I just noticed, at the end of the Call Me When You Are Sober video, Amy Lee walks down the table to the man and just puts her finger to his lips! I feel down now. I wish I could have someone like Natalie Maines, or —–. 

Really raining hard now, 430AM. I live in my own little world, and couldn’t quite bring myself to leave it when —– came along. 

What a merry chase I lead people! (23rd Sept 2006)

What a merry chase I lead people! I exult in it now. How I torment them and torture them with what I get away with and STILL get away with. I used to feel chased and hunted and hounded. Now I delight in leading them on a chase after me. See if you can keep up!

Everybody was waiting for me when I first went to Europe. They already knew me and they already knew I was on my way, and they already knew the date and time of my arrival. I feel like Bourne. They know who I am and I don’t. What was it I did? Who was I? Why was everyone trying to kill me? When I went to the top of the St Mark’s Belltower in Venice, the American kids knew me.

Another hot sunny albeit windy day. No good for the Scotsman or Sunset Strip. If I didn’t have a flat of my own, I could never have even asked —– to come home with me, or Pamela. That is why I must keep the flat at all costs. Women, music and drinking are where all my money goes. I spend every penny I have got on it. Wine, women and song. How can I possibly regret any of it? So I owe £6,000? It was all well spent! Shakira Illegal. Evanescence Call Me When You’re Sober. Infernal Ten Miles. Pink Who Knew.

Like you can tell the age of a tree by counting its rings, I can measure my life out in the number of Salomes I have seen at the opera. Just listening to songs on Berlin Energy reminds me of being in Berlin. I only asked —– and Pamela to come home with me because since then all I have done is get drunk and spend all my time in the Scotsman and Sunset Strip then go home and pass out.

Yes I am amused to feel like Bourne. But I also feel like Joe Orton—still getting away with it! Like Frank Wedekind, flaunting it in their faces! Pour épater la bourgeoisie. To do whatever it is I shouldn’t do. I LIVE FOR THE WILD NIETZSCHEAN DIONYSIAN PLEASURE. I LIVE FOR STIRRING PEOPLE UP. I LIVE FOR DOING THINGS I SHOULDN’T. I LIVE FOR DOING DANGEROUS THINGS WHICH WILL PUT ME ON THE VERGE OF SELF-DESTRUCTION. I LIVE FOR THE SLEAZY THRILL.

Royksopp What Else Is There. Yes I owe a massive £6000. Yes my monthly interest is a massive £80. But think of those nights in Munich Atlantic City watching Susi, Irina, Patricia, Bella Rosa, Viktoriya, or in Femina with Emily. Going to Nuremberg and meeting Martina in the Pils Bar. Those nights in Berlin with Yulia, Riccarda, Iga, Diana or Arrica. Would I take any of it back? No!

I AM DEBAUCHED. Debauchery is the road to Taoist contentment. The pleasures are great. The rewards are great.

The rewards for that £6,000 have been great.

Oh God I love to get drunk and lose it! And I always will. Whether in London or Berlin or Munich or Vienna or Brussels. I will always want to get drunk and lose it. That is the point of life. Live for the moment. Live every moment like it’s the last.

Why do I keep going back to the same places? For me, it is an attempt at time travel. I am trying to go back to the past & this time put right what I did wrong. I have left so much blood on the tracks, and I want to put it all right this time, with Susi, with Irina, with Viktoriya, and do the right thing this time. Please let me have that chance. So of course all my visits become increasingly forlorn.

What a lovely 30? 45? minutes I had with Harrietta in Angelique in Vienna.

I am quietly obsessed with recording my own life.

Für Elise is nostalgia for all the beautiful Esmeraldas you have fallen in love with & who you have had to leave behind.

If I have learnt one thing in life it is that you have to take your chances—Susi, —–, Irina, all of them. Clarisse. Martina.

When you hear Afghan Whigs See About Me, how can you not want to go back to the strip clubs? Yes, but it is about going back when they are at they best—in winter, and on Saturdays, and in Berlin or Munich. The Afghan Whigs seem to exist in that same drunken world as the Libertines, and Faith Healers, and me.

There is nothing better than travelling around Europe to see my favourite opera singers (19th Sept 2006)

There is nothing better than travelling around Europe to see my favourite opera singers. While there enjoying the brothels and strip clubs and pubs as well. Travel seems the only point to life. To travel is to be held in suspension. As soon as you come to rest, everything stops and falls. You are just left waiting until you can travel again. Between travels I will just drink and drink to make the time go faster. Four in the Calcutta. Managed to keep the box seat the whole time. Two more stunning big breast girls on the 87 to Vauxhall, black ponytail black glasses black T-shirt, and white blond, black shades, orange top over purple bra. I will go home today so I can get drunk while listening to music. That is all I do every day on my days off, get drunk. Just waiting for the time I can travel again. Thursday should be thundery, and Friday showers. The paper says we are heading for a period of high winds, torrential rain and abnormally high temperatures! Phnom Penh weather. It remains to be seen whether I can resist the lure of the illicit thrill during these atmospheric conditions. I do not want to go back to the Bell and Cotton Club and Cinema and Demi and Pamela until I am also ready to travel. Even when I get September out of the way, there is still all of October, all of November, and all of December to get through! Can I really resist travelling in December? Maybe I will just pop to Brussels? I travel to wallow in nostalgia, not see new places. But just going to Brussels would seem such a dead end, wouldn’t it? Brussels should never be a terminus, it can only be a starting point. A jumping off point. Better to wait till the New Year and combine it with the Berlin trip. One hot steamy, rainy, Phnom Penh weekend I could just pop over to Brussels couldn't I, just for a Thursday Friday Saturday night, back home Sunday morning, back to work Sunday night? Just for a couple of days drinking in the Maes Bar, couple of nights at Empire and Gare du Nord? What is the difference from a couple of days drinking in the Calcutta, couple of nights at the Bell and Soho? 

I live for gambling, I live for saving my money in periods of abstinence just so I can blow it again on wicked women in London and Brussels and Vienna and Munich and Berlin. This boom and bust is what I live for. 

“What Rodin depicted in the Burghers was the birth of a specifically modern form of despair: an acceptance that there is no external source of redemption and the knowledge that one’s life might not be capable of generating its own capacity for redemption. What solace is available in the face of this dilemma? One possibility is work, the unswerving devotion to a craft that so impressed Rilke. The other is the sexual promise offered by women. In his later years Rodin achieved a blissful combination of these possibilities, devoting hours and hours to making thousands of drawings of naked women, often in states of sexual rapture. ‘People say I think too much about women,’ he explained. ‘Yet after all, what is there more important to think about?’ In Milton–as in the Bible–the Fall comes after Adam has tasted Eve in all her tainted sensuality. This inverts the reality of the situation: that the lure of sex is one of the things that makes the fallen state not simply bearable but desirable. Wittingly or not, Milton provides a glimpse of a paradise that is endlessly regainable: ‘Carnal desire inflaming, he on Eve/Began to cast lascivious eyes, she him/As wantonly repaid…’ Rodin trained himself to draw without taking his eyes off the women who were happy to surrender themselves to him as he abandoned himself to his gaze, (William Rothenstein, to whom Rodin made the remark about the importance of women, recalls him ‘caressing his models with his eyes, and sometimes too with his hands’.)” 

I abandon myself to my gaze. I have a deep attachment to Brussels, Munich, Vienna and Berlin. I used to spend all my spare money in the Bell and Cotton Club and Soho. Now I save it all for travelling in December and January. I can moan about all the money I have wasted on sex and strippers over the past few years, but isn’t that the point of life?!!!! There is nothing I would rather do with my money. I just need to control it in London so I can also enjoy the womanly delights of Berlin and Brussels and Vienna and Munich.

The Oktoberfest has begun!!! (18th Sept 2006)

The Oktoberfest has begun!!! This is also BOULEVARD ASPHALT JUNGLE GIRL DAY First Day after POCL and BERLIN TO GET DIANASTR EVENT HORIZON BUTTMAN INFERNO Day. If I hadn’t had my credit card stolen in Brussels, I would never have met Martina in Nuremberg Pils Bar.

I carefully document the wreckage of my life (17th Sept 2006)

I carefully document the wreckage of my life. I write amongst the ruins. I record my catastrophes of love. Florence is just the latest. Maybe in December I can go back to the Tuesday night S&Js. Sexy blonde wavy hair Czech looking girl in black cardigan & blue jeans at 87 stop. Travelling is the point of life. I will continue to devote my life to that. With maybe a Saturday night visit to the Bell or the Cotton Club every couple of weeks, while paying the rent on my little nest. I think it CAN all be done. Thank god I have stopped the obsessiveness of the Bell & Cotton visits. Their rarity value has made them so much more breathlessly nervewracking and enjoyable. I have got some operas to see now. La Traviata at ENO, Faust and Carmen (Antonacci AND Domashenko) at Covent Garden. Life is good is it not? Still the sadness about Florence.

I shut out all the people who try to love me (16th Sept 2006)

I shut out all the people who try to love me. Florence, mother. I just feel this deadness, and I cling onto this deadness for dear life. Being brought back to life is terrifying. I hurt myself rather than let a girl bring me back to life. I cannot believe I dedicate myself so totally to getting drunk when there was something special like Florence waiting for me. I preferred to concentrate on the drink, and let Florence go. You Never Call Me When You’re Sober. You only want it cos it’s over. It’s over. Well done. I kept myself safe, so Florence could not get in. I feel so down now, 3:22 in the morning. Ten Miles Infernal. Shakira Hips Don’t Lie. Florence was always such a happy thing. She always looks so unhappy when I am there now, so uncomfortable. No happiness in this life. I bring unhappiness to all people who try to love me. Because I am cold, and I stay cold. I am ice. I am high in the cold icy air of the mountains, weeping, writing with blue shaking hands in cold stoveless rooms.

Munich Editors. I have to go before 2pm because of the Scissor Sisters concert in Trafalgar Square. Wouldn’t you like to go to the concert? No. All I care about is writing, drinking, and watching girls take their clothes off while dancing to loud music. I remember how unhappy I made B Rosa, too. Patricia, too. Susi, too. I am so cold. I shut people out and get shut out by them. Maybe I can come back home Tuesday afternoon and spend all week here again. Florence must have been thinking about my snub for the whole two weeks, because as soon as I came in she was looking to make eye contact with me and when she did, she straightaway put her finger to her lips. If we cannot make each other happy, then we can at least make each other unhappy. That is our relationship.

Addicted to opium and alcohol. I insist on the primacy of my own experience. My own vision. I can only be alone. I can only be in cold icy mountains.

Don’t be unhappy, be happy! Think what immense power you have got! You have made the great separation & now live for pure priapism. You have got money. Winter is coming. I can go to the Bell, the Cotton Club, Cotton Club Cinema, Demi and Pamela. In January I can go to Berlin. This is going to be a season of the flesh. It is funny when I got the flat I thought now I can go to the Bell & this time talk to the girls & ask them to come home with me, and that is exactly what happened, and I could have had a relationship with Florence–but threw it away. The one thing I said I wanted.
I have got a nice little job I enjoy. I have got money coming in. I have got my own little nest. I have got a week off in December and another week off in January to go to Berlin, for La Traviata and Carmina Burana.

“Where do you live actually?” said Pamela to me. The discipline of saving money is actually a really exciting one. It has made the Bell more exciting for me. It will no doubt make the Cotton Club more exciting for me eventually. I love the things I have got away with in the past, the things I get away with now, the things I will get away with in the future.

I have got my book-lined London home, filled with ferns, and classical music. I live like a church mouse in a little hotel earning the money to write my books, while enjoying the girls taking their knickers off to loud music, and travelling a couple of times a year to Berlin. I am still sad about Florence. Do what you want with your genitals, otherwise you will regret it when you’re dead.

How when I watch Eminem’s Ass Like That or Shake That Ass videos, or Jon Bon Jovi’s Queen of New Orleans, or Korn’s Word Up, it makes me so much want to to get back to the strip club. To the Bell or Cotton Club (nowhere else in London!), Atlantic City. It rarely is as hot and exciting as it looks in the videos, although Saturdays are best–anywhere. Empire, Atlantic City, Bell or Cotton, Saturday nights are the wildest and best. If I spend all my money on that, and my life revolves around that, then going to a pornographic cinema after that and Esmeralda to finish, why not? If that is what you like doing, and that is what gives you the most pleasure then that is absolutely what you should continue doing, with joy! I was walking along ——– platform, remembering the excitement I feel when I am starting one of my travels & heading off to Eurostar. How exciting that is. But at the same time what dulls the excitement completely is if I travel knowing that I already owe £6,000 and I really cannot afford to be doing it, then that completely diminishes the excitement. That is why this hibernation is necessary before I can even consider going to Berlin in the New Year.

“We drank hard and talked about what Debord, who drank persistently and prodigiously, had written about alcohol" (15th Sept 2006)

“We drank hard and talked about what Debord, who drank persistently and prodigiously, had written about alcohol. 'I admire Debord as a perfect and dedicated drinker.' We talked about how, in the early years of his career as a drinker, Debord was always in pursuit of or just arriving at a perfect point of intoxication which, unlike paid labour or any other servile activity, would reveal ‘the true taste of the passage of time’. Drinking was a beautiful poetic game, with its rules and protocols. Debord devoted pages to describing this notion.”
Irina suddenly leaned over to me and said to me “I’m sorry, you’re a nice guy, but you drink too much” before giving me the ultimate private dance. I said to Viktoriya “You hate me?” and she exploded back with real venom “Yes. Because you’re always drunk.”

“I am at the stage now of Paris in 1875" (14th Sept 2006)

“I am at the stage now of Paris in 1875, starting to rebuild itself, glorying in the spectacle of the Garnier Opera opening, a sparkling renaissance is beginning, like the war, siege, and commune never happened, like I had learnt nothing. But what else can you do, you must go on, you must find enjoyment and pleasure; though now it is more realistic, blackened and tempered with sorrow and realisation it is merely consolation.” I had to rebuild myself after the failed relationsip with Black Bob, with Pooky, with Florence. All my books will be seen in a post-Florence yellow light now. A Yellow Claw fog on the Embankment of London. A murderous plot is hatching, Fu Manchu is about to strike again. Once the clocks go back I can indulge myself again. Maybe I could go to Berlin in December! I suppose the main theme of my books is “the simple pleasures are the only realities”.What happened with my paradigm shift was that overnight I simplified my life. Write about what you know. Well, what do I know about? I know about strippers, and I know about scopophilia. I know about the nervousness that almost stops you from breathing, as you near Nuremberg, or walk into the entrance hall, or go up the stairs to a model’s door. Or walk from the 91 bus stop down to the Midnight Bell. I know about watching and watching, and never wanting to actually do anything. I know at first that intrigues the girls, then entices them, then bewilders them, and finally makes them contemptuous and disgusted.
“His pamphlets, articles and letters during his thirty years in London form a coherent commentary on contemporary political affairs in the light of his new method of analysis. They are sharp, lucid, mordant, realistic, astonishingly modern in tone, and aimed deliberately against the prevailing optimistic temper of his time”.

The Vienna visit feels like such a waste when I have nothing particularly to go for except that it will be Christmas (13th Sept 2006)

The Vienna visit feels like such a waste when I have nothing particularly to go for except that it will be Christmas. At least in Berlin I have got La Traviata and Carmina Burana to see in January, that is the hook I can hang the visit on, and in April I have got Katarina Dalayman’s Salome. But Vienna seems pointless and totally obscenely extravagant when I am already so much in debt and probably by then paying such huge interest on it. What other chute moments have I had? The American girl on the Eurostar to Brussels. That ruined my entire four day stay before I got there. I could not get over it. A crippling indecision what to say and inability to act meant I let her just walk away from me and killed myself. The pink top blonde on the plane to Munich. The crippling fear is that once I start talking to them they will realise I am not the man they thought I was from looking at my pretty eyes and sweetness. Once I try to get involved with a girl, my total inablilities in that area become exposed, as they did with Lotta and Chess Goddess, when normally I keep them so well covered up by my silence and my reticence, which attracts them and lures them in. Florence hushed me with a gesture when I arrived, that is her revenge for me turning away from her when she tried to say “It is nice to see you again” last time. And the last time she collected she didn’t just hold out her jug, she plumped both elbows on the bar and leaned there next to me as if this was an invitation for me to say something but again I just put the pound in without a word and she quickly turned and left. It is like it took her so many months to lure me out of my shell, and now I am never going to let her lure me out again. I have crept back under my stone and I am going to stay there. I had my chute moment with Chess Goddess too, that is why I left a trail of blood along the Exhibition Road. And of course with Pooky, that led to the psychological destruction during my trip to Oslo. When you are going through a psychological meltdown people seem to sense it and rush in to give you a kick while you are down. It is like a joyous, gleeful feeding frenzy. Indeed people are like wolves to me. As they were to Kaspar, to John Merrick, to Van Gogh, to Oscar Wilde after his imprisonment. All these beautiful, sensitive, gentle people were absolutely ripped to shreds by gleeful, vicious society.

I feel an almost physical revulsion at the thought of going back to Cotton Club and Demi and Pamela. But what else is there, so I will eventually. When I know the pleasures I have felt in those places felt so intense. I feel a physical revulsion for going back to those nighttime Vienna places and the nighttime Berlin places. I feel a physical revulsion for spending any money when I am in this saving mode. That is good. I have become allergic to spending money when before I seemed addicted to it. I feel an almost physical revulsion for women. I am a strange man. How can Florence or anyone have a relationship with a strange man like me. I am like Ralph Fiennes's Spider. I only learnt how to be alone when I was a baby, and I always will be. I love places where I can be alone surrounded by loud pounding music and naked girls, that is why I love the dream world of the Bell and the Cotton Club so much. It is the ultimate detachment. The ultimate transcendency. The ultimate lens. The ultimate gateway to the state of bliss that is the Kingdom of Death. Ultimate nothingness. Florence’s finger to the lips in a hushing gesture seems a very big moment. That nervousness so intense I cannot breathe as the train nears Nuremberg & as I got off and walk along the corridor to the entrance hall, and the nervousness I felt so intense I could not breathe as I went down the steps at the Astral, I now feel when I walk to the Scotsman from the north from the 91 stop. I feel it too when I enter Sunset Cinema, hoping to find a woman being monickered, and also when I go up the models’ steps. That is the high. That is the drug.

I will try to go straight home Wednesday night (12th Sept 2006)

I will try to go straight home Wednesday night and not come back till Saturday morning, that will minimise my costs as much as possible. A missed call from Olga at 23:06 on Friday night apparently. Strange I did not notice it before. I should not feel too bad. Going to the Bell to see Florence only cost me £20 on the girls and £12 on drink. That is only £32. That is not bad for a Saturday night when I won’t have another Saturday off for three weeks. It is good to be there when it is so busy. I look forward to getting to work to listen to Boogieradio, and to read the newspaper articles of Karl Marx. “Berlioz’s unstinting lionisation of Beethoven in the pages of La Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris,the most important and influential music journal in 19th-century France, also played a major role in establishing him at the centre of the repertory for the concert hall.” In my journal, what would I write about, who would I lionise? I would lionise the Midnight Bell, perhaps, and its dancers, extolling the virtues of Sylvia and Florence and Janet above all others. Extolling them in messianic, apocalyptic, grandiose, diva-esque terms, like they are Sarah Bernhardts. Invoking Hungarian history. Giving reviews of their performances just the way one would with reviews of violinists or pianists. They are all on a stage, why not? Instead of one paragraph reviews of Anita Berber’s Bethanien or Marlene Dietrich’s grave, extend them into full page articles, enabling me to digress into talking about the Blue Angel, Lola, etc. Berber at the Romanisches Cafe, Tucholsky. It would be a journal devoted to the strip clubs of London, the pubs, to Berlin, and Vienna, and Brussels, and Munich. Florencia, from Brazil, has made Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie her own, Crazy her own, Check On It her own. Talk about them the way you would about great opera singers of the 1880s, from the stage side box. Write a magazine where on one page there is a review of Barbara Frittoli at the Wigmore Hall on Wednesday night, and on the facing page, a review of the Flying Scotsman on Thursday night, each with equal analysis. My reviews are scurrilous and scandalous, like James Ellroy, Charles Bukowski. Winter is coming. Remember those cold icy days when I first moved in here? Remember the excitement of those Astral nights? Missing in Action Painter film? The unable to breathe shaking with excitement as I headed down the steps not knowing what I was about to see? Remember that unbelievably huge breasted beautiful Czech girl at the Boulevard? It is almost like a dream. I cannot believe I witnessed something so spectacularly sexy as her and made so little of it. If only I knew where she was now.

I would like to write my own magazine like the Fackel, full of my hard-hitting sometimes scurrilous articles and reviews of London life. Write about Barbara Frittoli and the tyranny of not being able to write about the singer’s beauty, and sexual allure, as if this must not be mentioned, like some guilty secret. Write about La Traviata at the ENO, a weepy opera about “some consumptive whore, when in real life whores are treated like the lowest of the low, yet here she is celebrated as something glorious”. I love writers like Peter Wilby, Sidney Blumenthal, Naomi Klein, Maureen Dowd, and in the past of course Karl Kraus, Karl Marx.

The sensible thing is to not go to Vienna but to keep saving and rid myself of this crippling, dangerous debt. I have been reminded for the first time in a long while of the psychological horror of my missed opportunity with Florence. The Tombe moment came in two parts, like a double break of a bone. It is sad what our friendship has turned into. When she spots me her face is so bleak and stressed and unhappy.

I would rather write a paper magazine. People get tired of scrolling and clicking on links. Only if they have got a physical paper magazine in their hands can they leaf through and see everything in one place. My magazine, which no one else need ever see, can run alongside and counterpoint to my books which people also never see. This will be my Fackel and my Simplicissimus side by side with my Grundrisse, the manuscript copy of Das Kapital.

The fact that I have paid £600 off my Barclaycard in the space of a month shows what is possible (11th Sept 2006)

The fact that I have paid £600 off my Barclaycard in the space of a month shows what is possible. I don’t think I am going to go to Vienna in December. I think I would rather keep waiting and keep saving. So when I do travel I will have a real war chest to travel with. I was thinking in the Calcutta on Thursday that there is nothing worth spending money on except sex. If it is a choice between seeing Volver or A Scanner Darkly,or going to see a girl take her knickers off to music, then there can only be one winner. You see people who go on beach holidays, or Amalfi, and I think how bored I would be. The only holiday that means anything is in red light districts. To meet new strippers and new Esmeraldas. What is wrong with running a high debt? We will see how high my Virgin interest is when that hits in October. In McDonald's most beautiful gorgeous voluptuous brunette girl, maybe 18 or 19, skin tight black top over rolls of fat and big fat huge breasts, thick yellow snakeskin belt, blue jeans over fat arse, pretty pretty face, little snub nose. I could not take my eyes off her & she knew it as she finally shot me a glance as I stepped forward to order. Nothing in the city matters except sex, the buying and selling of it, young women stripping for you, young women lying back on the bed and opening their legs for you, men all with their cocks out in a dark porn cinema. This is the reality of my life.

Vienna is still a mystery to me. With three consecutive visits to Brussels, then three to Munich, then three to Berlin, I felt I cracked the nut of all those places. I still have not achieved that with Vienna. Viennese Eroticism is very important to me. Primitive London. I am very intellectual yet I live very primitively, my animal instincts always winning out over my cerebral ones. So much drink has sozzled my brain that I doubt I have any cerebral instincts left at all. What an animal I was with Anya at the stag party; how impressed Sylvia seemed to be & so much more warm and friendly to me than she had ever been before. When people write about my life 50 years from now, they will have to write about the Calcutta, the Flying Scotsman, Sunset Strip and Carnival. About Astral, Soho Cinema, and Sunset Cinema. About Atlantic City. About Stutti Frutti, Mon Cheri, Golden Gate, Monte Carlo and Ciro. If I do not travel to Vienna and Berlin in December and the New Year I will have no chance to meet a new Irina or Susi, Patricia or Viktoriya. Things happen when you travel. In Brussels I met Clarisse. In Frankfurt Katerina. In Berlin Erika. It is important to keep exploring.

I live in a kind of Francis Bacon London. I live in the gutter like him. My writing is visceral and from the guts, full of pinks and reds and purples, like his paintings. I too am fascinated by a Pope. I am visceral and fascinated and turned on by my naked self like Egon Schiele. Do not apologise for this. Exult in it. I am priapic and I will just do it more than ever. I am saving money by not doing it so much just so I can do it more. I am going to Vienna at Christmas to fuck a couple of Viennese whores. In strip clubs every night is like Sylvester’s Eve; or Walpurgisnacht. The more bawdy and raucous the better; that is why I like the Bell on Saturday nights. In London all the strip pubs are packed with men; again I ask the question, where do all the men go in Berlin? In Vienna? In Brussels?

The usual post-drinking depression and low mood. Brain like Swiss cheese. As I came out of the lavatory, Florence was already up on stage, dancing to Promiscuous Girl, in a new white top covered with red & green spots. She spotted me almost immediately, and was looking a lot in my direction, but it was only after I got my drink & leaned against the post, that I made eye contact with her. She was obviously waiting for the eye contact, because she immediately put her finger to her lips as if telling me to be quiet! Now Florence is being sarcastic to me. A new development, perhaps brought on by me walking out during her first dance last time. Next time she collected she said Hey, and hit me on back to get my attention, then put her face to mine so I could kiss her cheek. Later, she leaned on bar with both arms till I put the money in the right pot. We never exchanged any words all night. Also there Demi, Camilla, Tequila, Maira, Helen, Arleni, and for one last dance Zoe and Cristina. Quite a strong night, Florence, Maira, Arleni, Demi, Helen. I will return on Saturday 30th September. The affair with Florence, the year-long affair with Florence, proves that I will always be alone. As the affair with Chess Goddess, and with Lotta, proved that I will always be alone. My books are about alienation, anomie, detachment, solipsism, solitude. A strange Dr Who dream with David Tennant repeatedly being pulled back to the same bleak planet, where a military garrison stroke Saddam-like palace was all hustling and bustling preparing to get out before the evil forces on the planet arrive and destroy them. The last time,the Doctor goes up the big wide steps to the palace, into the commander’s office, and there is Vicky sitting head down at desk as his secretary. And then there was Anya all in starched white tunic and trousers.

The 91 makes getting to and from the Bell so quick and easy. What a discovery, so late in the day! Like discovering I had been taking the long route back to the Brussels Ibis all these years. That was hilarious. Think of the miles I walked in the early hours of the morning unnecessarily. I had two pints in the Calcutta & four in the Bell. Did not see anyone interesting, was worth it to see Florence again. The sensible thing would be not to go to Vienna in December, but it would be nice just to take a break. The thought of going round the Gurtel for ML Revue, and Manhattan, and Pour Platin, just makes me feel tired & filled with ennui, as the thought of going back to Atlantic City or any of the Berlin places does, but….what else is there to do? I am tired of it all but it is all there is. Think how much I masturbated my first time in the Dorint on my psychological meltdown trip to Oslo. I came over myself again and again every night. I need an exotic five or six days away, in the lush flora & fauna rainforest of Brussels and Vienna. It will be expensive but worth it. You cannot measure the value to me of these trips; it outweighs the cost.

I love the scientific analysis of my life (10th Sept 2006)

I love the scientific analysis of my life, like Nietzsche. In Nietzschean numbered paragraphs. Like the Rhine Zeitung newspaper articles of Karl Marx. Like the Die Fackel magazine articles of Karl Kraus. Apocalyptic, messianic, satirical. All of them supposed to have some Jewish blood in them, as I have Irish blood in me. This is not possible when I have drink in my head all the time. It is also true that some of the high moments of my life have come in the Astral Cinema and the Boulevard Cinema and the Sunset Cinema. Remember that big mullet-haired guy who pulled his shorts down all the way to his ankles & sat there with a tube of soap or vaseline, regularly applying it to his cock in the Astral. Remember Red Riding Hood night when I sat for six hours in the front row of Soho Cinema till I was raw & practically passing out from the smoky, fuggy, sticky, lubricious atmosphere and when I finally left I crossed deserted Leicester Square in the lashing rain. Remember black dress Kay in the front row of Sunset sitting completely naked as black man put his huge dick in her mouth, businessman with trousers round ankles put condom on & fucked her, before “monica'ring” her over her breasts, all the time while she stroked my cock with her hand. Remember red bra girl in the Sunset. Not to mention the highs I have reached in Berlin Erotic Centre, or Sarah Young, or Atlantic City or Sexyland kabins, or ML Revue cabins, or the Brussels Gare du Nord cabins. Melani said she wanted to go with me to the opera & I stayed away from her. Pamela hinted she would like to go to the seaside with me & I stayed away from her. Florence said she wanted to go out with me & on that Madonna Hung Up and Beyonce Check On It night, when —– thanked me for the postcard, I let her go. I do not want to go out with girls. Going out with Chess Goddess and Lotta were horrible stressful experiences and like Jason Bourne I was checking sightlines and looking for exits the whole time. The happy, magical nights I have had in the crowded bearpits of Sunset Strip, Gold Dress Gold Shoes girl on The Beast December night, Jolanda Red Right Hand, or Flying Scotsman Sex on the Beach, Sylvia Walpurgis Night, Tais Lola, Janet Material Girl, or Atlantic City. And they are only any good when they are crowded bearpits. Remember how crowded the Atlantic City cinema used to get when the girl came on to strip just once an hour? They are only good when the men are screaming at the girl on stage as like beasts in the menagerie. Yes, it will be too soon to go back to Vienna but the thrill of being in Vienna in December…? Yes, I do not want to go back to the drunken, tiring Midnight Bell but it is very special to see Florence dancing to Shakira or Gnarls Barkley…? Afterwards I could come back to Charing Cross on the 91 and then get a 176 up to Tottenham Court Road tube to walk down to Sunset Cinema. I will start to allow myself every Saturday off as my Hogarthian night. My Rake’s Progress night. My Frank Wedekind night.

La Traviata, the opera of a consumptive whore, is coming to mean something special to me, since seeing Stefania Bonfadelli at the Deutsche Oper, and Christine Schafer at the Staatsoper. It does remind me so much of Riccarda, Diana, Iga, but also of Lela, Ana Maria, Olga, all of whom I have seen deteriorate before my eyes. It is back at ENO this month. There is also Anna Caterina Antonacci and Marina Domashenko as Carmen at Covent Garden.

I have to go out today to get my bus pass, so I will get the bus to Charing Cross & one in the Calcutta & then see what happens from there. I think it is better to go to Vienna in December and Berlin in April for Katerina Dalayman’s Salome. Vienna is a little bit more exotic & still unexplored compared to Berlin. I think if I stayed home in December & then got to Berlin in January I would feel bored there & feeling I had missed something special. Munich was poor in January because I travelled so hard up. Well, by the time of Vienna in December I will still be even more hard up! Go and spend so much money that Berlin in the New Year is out of the question and I can instead concentrate on saving up for April. Walpurgis Night arrival in Berlin. I will have a strictly clinical visit to the Bell tonight, if at all. You have to go out on a Saturday night. Otherwise there is no point being alive.

On the train into London last night in the pitch dark, I felt so much like I was on that train to Nuremberg. It crept and creaked along & I felt with every minute that passes I am getting nearer to Nuremberg and I remember that absolutely mind-blowing nervousness I used to feel on those three visits. By the time I got off & was walking along the station corridor from the platform I could hardly breathe. I was gasping and hyperventilating and shaking, knowing I would soon be in the Pils Bar and the Caribic. Also I felt like I was on the train into Vienna.

If I’m excited and inspired by doing some good writing & thinking I do like to go out & enjoy the Scotsman on a Saturday (9th Sept 2006)

If I’m excited, and inspired by doing some good writing & thinking, I do like to go out & enjoy the Scotsman on a Saturday. That is the secret. I don’t just earn it by saving money, I earn it by doing some great writing—then I deserve it & feel I deserve it.
I am a great believer that you carry the weather with you. If you travel with a spark, a dancing flame inside you, you will have a great time. If you travel unhappy, and in a black place, weighed down by worries and debts, you will have a sad time. I cannot say the well in Munich has run dry; probably it is my well that has run dry. When my well fills up again, by making myself happier, ridding myself of obsessions, financial worries, anxieties, paranoid depressions, I will find Munich’s well is full to over-brimming again, "stars filling the throat to the crop", as it was absolutely full to over-brimming when I met Susi, Irina on the night of Turkey v England, Patricia, Emily on the Night of the Snow, Viktoriya in those four magical life-changing visits in the space of six months. I love loud pounding music. Muse Starlight. Even in the Scotsman standing looking up at the screen I loved hearing the loud pounding music from behind me, Pink Who Knew. The start of Miami Vice suddenly starts with loud pounding music in a club & a girl pole-dancing.

I love looking at stars in the black sky and colourful gassy nebulas, as it reminds me of the old E ships idea. Elric ships in space. Pope in his velvet lined spaceship. On the 91 to King’s Cross a brunette girl vaguely Canadian-looking came & instead of sitting on empty seats beside me, sat on the seat facing me, reading a book, so I could get get a look at the deep cleavage under brown jacket, beautiful globes visible & she knew I was looking. Then I knew I DID want Bell. Evanescence. You never call me when you’re sober. Jokeren Gravol. DAD Scare Yourself. Gnarls Barkley Smiley Faces. Oh I’ve just remembered those two Brazilians running for 87 yesterday, blonde & brunette. The brunette in white T and blue jeans over most incredible bubble butt bulging all over the place though she was really slim. Brazilians have got the best butts. Bloodhound Gang Uhn Tiss. Robbie Rudebox. Zero 7 Throw It All Away. Nellie Furtado Maneater.

I think after all it might be possible to achieve a balanced lifestyle for myself. Paying my rent, and allowing myself one night out a week, so I can still get to wallow in the Libertinesesque/Hogarthian/Rabelaisian/Rake’s Progress life, and still seriously paying off my cards so I can get to Berlin or Vienna a couple of times a year.

It is always hard to drink, go to cinema, then start drinking again. I was tired & run down yesterday & still quite enjoyed Zoe and Jane and Leah, how much better if I am sober and excited? The Francis Bacon Gilded Gutter Lily/Ernest Dowson/Frank Wedekind/Oscar Wilde Feasting With Panthers/Vincent Van Gogh Hour of the Flesh life. Kanye West Number One. Kelis Bossy. Junior Senior Get to Know you better. On my last few trips I have been hoping to get lucky and have a great time on just a very small budget with just a very small outlay & that is why I got so little back. You have to speculate to accumulate. I had so little starting capital to gamble with so I was only ever going to get little back. You have to gamble big if you are going to gamble at all. I should have gone with Alla & Olga and to hell with it. I should have gone with Clarisse & to hell with it. What memories that would have been! Justin Sexyback. Sugababes Red Dress. After all, the great thing about the Bell is that it can cost as little as £5. One pint and two girls and then push off. Cotton Club is a minimum £19 to start off with. How I always remember Masha dancing to Global DJs. That is why I travel. I will go back to Vienna, I will go back to Munich. I will owe £6000 or £7000. So what? For those memories. Habit encrusts itself to us, like barnacles. Every few years one finally makes the effort to scrape all the barnacles off, and uncover the shiny ship’s hull underneath, as if new. Such I have just done.

The graph proves that the flat is affordable (8th Sept 2006)

The graph proves that the flat is affordable, allowing me one night out a week. I think I will have to choose between Berlin or Vienna though. Yes I fell off the wagon again, but I do not feel so bad because I had decided to go on Saturday which I will now not do(???). Layla Jane Stella Nicki Zoe Camilla Crystal and after 7 Leah and Sol. I stayed just to see Leah otherwise I would have left after one. It is so nice now I have discovered the 91 bus to get there & back again! After three pints in the Calcutta I did not feel like Scanner or Volver, so went to see Miami Vice instead, in the front row. It was very good. I will have to go back to the flat tonight, Friday night, because there are engineering works on the train all weekend.
Yes my love is like poison, but the Flying Scotsman is like poison too. I am so much like Bob, throwing away all my savings, —– is so much like Jenny. —– is so much like Ella. It is Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky made flesh. It is the Libertines. Perhaps I will go Saturday! Just to look! Just for one pint to see the Victim’s Board! What is the point saving money to see strippers in Vienna when the best one is right here in London? Oh no I don’t want to go through that tiring sleazy drunkenness again just two days after the last one. No wait for the dark rainy days. Yesterday was horribly sunny & Saturday will be the same. Two fortnights in a row I have paid £300 off my Barclaycard! That proves the flat is affordable to me. Sunday and Monday are going to be 27ºC. This summer is hanging on & coming back for more. The dog days.

I slept all day again to quarter to 7 on the floor (3rd Sept 2006)

I slept all day again to quarter to 7 on the floor. Uneventful journey to work. Two more nights to get through. DR radio has stopped working. It was playing fine when I came in, so I do not know what has happened to it. I fear sabotage, but I am sure I have not left my seat or turned my back the whole time other people were here. What has gone wrong with it? Maybe it is a DR website problem and it will come back later?************Yes it came back! I was feeling so calm all through the night, I don’t know why suddenly I felt so disintegrated by the time I left. I failed at the Midnight Bell and felt defeated. When I always used to stand there so in control. I feel like going out for a drink before work tonight. I need to let off pressure.

I have financial issues (2nd Sept 2006)

I have financial issues. It is like being tied up with ropes. I dream that with one bound I could be free. Like Fantomas. I am tied up with £6000 worth of rope.*********Everything is starting to come good again. The black stormy cool weather has arrived. September has arrived. I have got my bus stop back. I am free of the obsession with Midnight Bell and Cotton Club. Free of the obsession with Lilith. I have saved £400 in four weeks. Reduced my Barclaycard debt from £1600 to £1200 and imminently down to £900. I seem to only be drinking seven beers a week at the moment, instead of fifteen-twenty! Going to Vienna for five days will blow £900 that it has taken four months to save. But “those who run seem to have all the fun”. It is time for another adventure. My life couldn’t go on as it was. It was madness.***********An uneventful journey to work. Three more nights to get through! Then what? Listening to DR Boogie Radio makes me feel like I am on holiday already. Loft Pussycat Lounge. Nik & Jay Boing. Amerie One Thing. Rammstein Keine Lust. I am worried that if I do not do the naughty things I will lose the knack. You get out of the habit. It just shows every time something apparently bad happens, good comes out of it. When Florence destroyed me the other week, it led me into the paradigm shift, and finally saving money, ending my obsession with Midnight Bell and Cotton Club. When I came in & found all the radio stations gone on my work pc, it led to me finding DR Boogie Radio, the best radio station I have ever found. Being given so much more work to do at nights has cured me of the long boredom & made the nights go much faster. Blaze feat Barbara Tucker Most Precious Love

Just in January & February I spent £638 on Tallulah and £500 on drink. Just two months of not going out to Bell & Cotton Club would save me £1100, enough to go on holiday in the New Year. I spent most of my earnings in the Bell and the Cotton Club.

Finally roused myself from bed to record 11.04am Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia antarctica (1st September 2006)

Finally roused myself from bed to record 11.04am Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia antarctica.
11.48am Scriabin: Sonata No 9, Op 68 “Black Mass”. Let this be like the months preparing for the Swedish visit, after the Sleeping Beauty is a Junkie newspaper article. Berlin Phil at the Proms tonight.
All that matters is the books. Autismus. Black Narcissus. The Cold Icy Air of the Mountains. Casanova.
Do I really want to go to Vienna and Berlin so much? Wasn’t the Midnight Bell better? Those heady nights watching Florence Crazy, Hips Don’t Lie, Check On It, Martini, Janet Material Girl, Amanda, Sylvia Dip It Low, Vicki, Anya, Lucky. Bodyrockers I like the way you move. Kelly. Thais Lola. Carla. Sunny No One Knows. The Bell is so far and away the best of the strip pubs in London. Yes, I lost myself there, but isn’t losing yourself exciting. I want Berlin and Vienna for really exotic, dirty sex. Wait for the really dark, black, rainy nights before going out. I am completely carefree because I am a writer. I am Ernest Dowson and that is all that is important. I am Frank Wedekind. I am Karl Kraus. “A terrorist launched a series of bomb attacks against chamber music venues around London.” “Amidst the destruction and bloodshed, the piano player and the violinist played on, refusing to let the terrorists win”.
“Curling tendrils of black ink like blood, growing like flowers around the doorways and streets and buses. Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy started up from somewhere amidst the towering foliage. Somewhere, at the Midnight Bell, Florence started to dance.”
Yes I question if I want to go to Vienna wasting all that money after working so hard to save it, but that is to forget the excitement, the nervousness so intense I cannot breathe as my train pulls into Vienna.